INGREDIENTS
- 1 pound flank steak fat trimmed, patted dry, thinly sliced ¼ inch
- 1 Russet potato (almost 1 pound) peeled, chopped into ½ inch pieces
- 1/2 small red onion diced (1 cup)
- 10 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
- fresh chopped parsley for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
- Heat a large pan over medium heat for a few minutes until hot. The pan should be large enough to hold the steak and potatoes.
- Pour olive oil into the pan, tilting it to coat the bottom. Add potatoes and cook until tender, about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Add onions, cooking and stirring until fragrant, about a minute.
- Add steak, garlic, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper. Cook until the steak reaches your preferred doneness, less than 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Remove the pan from heat. Garnish with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.
Here’s another delicious and comforting weeknight dinner idea: thinly sliced steak sauteed with chunks of potato and seasoned with a lot of garlic, thyme, and oregano. Everything is cooked from scratch, yet is still really simple to make. All you need are the aforementioned ingredients plus some onions, olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh parsley.
I’ve made this dish three or four times during the past week and it never takes longer than 30 minutes to cook. Since it’s a skillet dinner, you only need one pan to cook everything. First the potatoes are pan-fried, then the onions, and lastly the steak. This can be a quick weeknight meal for two, or you can pair it with side dishes to make it serve four.
Some foods go hand-in-hand with each other, such as chips and salsa, or chocolate chip cookies and milk. Steak and potatoes is another such pairing and a really comforting one. I love the texture of tender beef slices with starchy chunks of potato, sauteed with plenty of minced garlic, thyme, and oregano. Other delicious beef combos include beef with mushrooms and noodles and beef with broccoli (slow cooker version).
My recipe uses steak in thinly sliced form (1/4 inch thickness) because it’s much easier and faster to cook, and less likely to be tough and chewy when overcooked. To avoid overcooking, once you’ve pan-seared the beef to your desired doneness, immediately turn off the heat and transfer the pan’s contents to a bowl or plate for serving. If you let the beef linger too long in the pan, it will continue cooking with the pan’s residual heat and result in overcooked beef. It’s not the end of the world if your beef slices are a bit overcooked as it’ll still taste great, but it’s easy to avoid.
I use dried oregano and thyme for the herbs in this dish, plus a generous 10 cloves of garlic. You can modify the spice mix depending on what you prefer — other seasonings such as dried basil or lemon pepper would also work. You can be creative here. I add the seasonings at the end of the recipe so that the flavors don’t get “cooked” out.
Mr. Savory Tooth and I eat this dinner as-is without any side dishes, since it produces two hearty servings. You can absolutely make some rice or pasta to pair with the steak and potatoes, in which case this recipe will yield enough for four servings.
Fantastic!